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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274316">The One That Got Away</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex'>Silex</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Baker Family Feels, Childhood, Family Feels, Fishing, Game: Resident Evil 7, Gen, Pre-Canon, Siblings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:55:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,343</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274316</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Now be quiet or you’ll scare the fish,” Uncle Joe gave his usual warning.</p>
<p>Zoe nodded gravely and Lucas pouted, though not because he’d been told to keep quiet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Gen Freeform Exchange2020, Happy Belated Treatmas 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The One That Got Away</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/gifts">Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)</a>.</li>



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur">Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)</a>  in the  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/happy_belated_treatmas_2020">happy_belated_treatmas_2020</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Now be quiet or you’ll scare the fish,” Uncle Joe gave his usual warning.</p>
<p>Zoe nodded gravely and Lucas pouted, though not because he’d been told to keep quiet.</p>
<p>On the way to Uncle Joe’s favorite fishing spot Lucas had seen an enormous, iridescent looking snake and had immediately bent down to grab a stick to throw at it.</p>
<p>Zoe had been terrified, because Ma and Pa didn’t let her anywhere near snakes, and had tried to hide behind Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe was a little more lax about it, but that was because snakes were all over the place where he lived. If he’d told her to stay away from snakes and expected her to follow it the way Ma did she’d never get to go fishing with him.</p>
<p>With Uncle Joe’s encouragement, Lucas had stood there, his mouth a thin hard line of concentration as he took aim and threw the stick as hard as he could.</p>
<p>The snake moved like it was water, shimmering off the path and into the weeds on either side, the stick splattering mud close to where it had been.</p>
<p>Zoe had laughed, telling Lucas that if he’d stayed on the baseball team then maybe he could have thrown fast enough to hit the snake.</p>
<p>Lucas had responded by throwing a fastball of mud at her, hitting her square in the chest.</p>
<p>Unlike Ma or Pa, Uncle Joe let them scuffle, only breaking it up after Zoe tried to shove Lucas into a puddle and Lucas had snapped at her that if she got him muddy she’d never see any of her toy cars ever again.</p>
<p>That was when Uncle Joe stepped in, grabbing them by their shirt collars and pulling them apart. Zoe had needed to stand on her tippy toes because of how he was holding her, kicking lines in the mud, and he lifted Lucas right off the ground to give him a good shake.</p>
<p>“That’s not how you fight!” Joe had scolded, shaking Lucas with each word, like he could rattle sense into him.</p>
<p>So Lucas had spent the rest of the walk to the fishing spot pouting while Zoe pondered what had just happened.</p>
<p>They weren’t in trouble because they’d gotten mud all over or even because they’d been fighting. He didn’t even tell her that she shouldn’t be fighting because girls didn’t fight, which was what Ma told her all the time when she had trouble in school.</p>
<p>Zoe had the feeling that Uncle Joe didn’t know much about little girls, but he also didn’t know much about Lucas, who was a whole ‘nother thing entirely.</p>
<p>“He’s more like you than me when we were little,” Uncle Joe had said regretfully to Pa one time when they’d been talking about Lucas, “But he’s not much like you either.”</p>
<p>“He’s like himself,” Pa had agreed and that had been the end of that.</p>
<p>Hearing that conversation had left Zoe jealous, because it sounded like such an amazing thing to have someone say about you, ‘Oh, they’re just like themself.’</p>
<p>She would have loved to have adults expect her to be like herself so that when she picked books about sports or cars or traveling to read for school book reports, or for her ‘what I want to be when I grow up project’ said that she wanted to move to Alaska and raise sled dogs the teacher would have just nodded along and thought that she was being like herself rather than suggesting that she could always have dogs closer to home or go on vacation to some place cold to see snow in the winter, as though it was the dogs and snow that mattered and not <em>Alaska</em>.</p>
<p>People had adventures in Alaska and she wanted to go on adventures.</p>
<p>Of course, walking through the woods with Uncle Joe could be an adventure too, since he didn’t always follow paths and just walked through puddles and brush to wherever it was that he wanted to go.</p>
<p>After Uncle Joe had scolded them they’d spent the whole rest of the walk silent, Lucas thinking whatever thoughts he had when he wasn’t talking and Zoe imagining that this was a real adventure, that they were lost in the swamp and if they didn’t catch fish for lunch they’d probably starve.</p>
<p>Actually, that wasn’t too far from the truth, because visits with Uncle Joe usually lasted the whole day and he didn’t keep much food in his little shack that was worth eating. If it came down to it, she’d probably rather starve than have stuff-in-a-can for lunch.</p>
<p>So she made absolutely sure to be quiet, not even complaining when Lucas told her that if she wanted to use worms for bait she’d have to cut them herself because he wasn’t helping.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe wouldn’t help either, because he nodded like an adult when Lucas said that, like her cutting her own bait was really important.</p>
<p>Which she guessed it was, because if she ever traveled on her own to go deep sea fishing on a boat on the actual ocean they probably wouldn’t cut her bait for her or put it on the hook.</p>
<p>Going deep sea fishing and catching a shark was on her list of things to do, right along with driving a race car and going to Alaska.</p>
<p>There were no sharks in the swamp, though Uncle Joe claimed that there were catfish nearly that big in some places.</p>
<p>Lucas’ eyes had lit up when he first heard that, ‘How big?’ and ‘What places?’ he’d wanted to know, and so had Zoe, but he’d wanted to know for different reasons, like if they were big enough to eat a person.</p>
<p>Lucas had always been interested in that kind of thing, whether doing something dangerous like getting electrocuted by touching something metal during a storm really could kill a person or if there really were animals out there that ate people.</p>
<p>Ma and Pa always got vague and looked at each other when those questions came up.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe on the other hand…</p>
<p>Zoe stole a look at him out of the corner of her eye as she finished cutting bait.</p>
<p>He already had his rod setup and had cast his lure out farther than either of them could manage.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe would answer those questions, sometimes with a sharp yes, and sometimes with a story about things that he’d seen.</p>
<p>From his stories Zoe knew that her uncle had traveled the world, or at least been to some places far away from home and he’d seen things there. Some of the things he’d talk about and sometimes he was the typical adult, shrugging and saying that it wasn’t anything for kids to worry about.</p>
<p>With the little hooks they were using today they weren’t likely to catch any giant fish, bluegills or crappie were likely, but surprises did happen.</p>
<p>“There’re strange fish out there sometimes,” Uncle Joe had once said with a kind of vague and adult way that sent chills down Zoe’s spine, “Fish that weren’t around here when I was a boy.”</p>
<p>That kind of thing was exciting and mysterious, like so many things about Uncle Joe. She hoped that someday she’d catch one of those fish and go to the library or one of her science teachers to figure out what it was.</p>
<p>Would they be colorful like tropical fish or toothy and dark like the pictures of deep sea fish that Lucas had shown her once?</p>
<p>Those fish, with their teeth too big for their mouths and mouths too big for their bodies had given her nightmares for weeks, but she’d never seen a fish like that before and trusted that her uncle wouldn’t let one of them hurt her.</p>
<p>Even if she did catch one of them today with Uncle Joe around she’d be brave.</p>
<p>“I bet the fish I catch’ll be bigger than yours,” Lucas whispered as he held his rod back and flicked it forward as hard as he could.</p>
<p>Zoe made a face at him and cast her own lure out, trying to mimic the way Uncle Joe did it.</p>
<p>She couldn’t cast as far as him or even Lucas, but she could at least manage to get the lure to go where she wanted it to most of the time.</p>
<p>For a while the three of them were silent, the noises of the swamp around them, the whisper-hiss of line being reeled back in and cast followed by the plop of a lure landing in the water were the only sounds other than those of the swamp all around them. Birds and bugs and water moving meant that it was never silent, even if it felt like that sometimes.</p>
<p>Sometimes Uncle Joe talked while they fished, but today didn’t seem like a talking day.</p>
<p>Even Lucas was quiet, in the kind of hush before a storm way he got when he was thinking.</p>
<p>Zoe wondered about what he was thinking, but not too hard. Lucas had Lucas thoughts and he was the only one who could get in his head, which was annoying because he was pretty good at guessing what she’d do.</p>
<p>Zoe felt the sharp tug of something hitting her bait, there and gone.</p>
<p>She sighed, knowing that her bait would be gone and she’d have to pick up another chunk of worm.</p>
<p>At least she knew that there was something out there.</p>
<p>As she reeled in she watched her uncle and brother’s rods. Lucas was moving his back and forth so the line made patterns in the water like a whirligig bug. Uncle Joe was slowly reeling his line in.</p>
<p>Reel-reel-reel-stop-reel-reel-stop and repeat was the pattern and Zoe made a mental note of it when the tip of his rod bounced up and down in the rapid little jerks that meant a fish was nibbling. If it worked to bring out the fish she’d have to try it herself.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe pulled his rod sharply to the side and the bouncing stopped then started up again.</p>
<p>The fish were nibbling, but not biting.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe went back to his pattern as Zoe made her next cast, trying to aim for the same spot his lure had been when he first started.</p>
<p>Her cast fell short.</p>
<p>Of course.</p>
<p>When she was bigger and older she might be able to cast like her uncle, because unlike a lot of people he never told her there were things she couldn’t do because she was a girl.</p>
<p>Someday she’d tell him about wanting to visit every state in a car of her own, even the places that weren’t really states like Rhode Island, which she thought might be somewhere by Florida and you had to take a boat to get to, and Canada which was kind of just there. She didn’t think that he’d laugh and tell her that it was impossible or strange for a girl to want to do, even if she told him about wanting to catch a shark or move to Alaska or the woods where there were pine trees and snow to go on adventures.</p>
<p>He’d listen and nod, and maybe even give advice, just like when he’d taught her about fishing, never once suggesting that the reason she was having trouble was because she was a girl.</p>
<p>Then again, maybe Uncle Joe didn’t know much about kids, because when he’d first shown them how to fish, after showing them how to tie a hook onto the line he’d taken out his knife to cut off the excess line and stood there staring at them while they stared back at him, waiting for him to cut the trailing ends of their line for them.</p>
<p>“Don’t either of you kids have knives?” he’d asked, sounding confused and upset, the way adults got when they asked what they thought was a simple question that you didn’t know the answer to, like when Ma had caught the two of them on the porch roof last spring and asked them what they were doing.</p>
<p>Uncle Joe had been bothered that neither of them had a knife and confronted Pa about it.</p>
<p>Pa had said that he didn’t think Lucas should have a knife and that Zoe was too young, and Uncle Joe hadn’t liked that, demanding to know what Pa meant, like he was Pa and Pa was just a little kid saying something stupid. They’d argued like adults did, at least at first, but the arguing got louder and louder until it wasn’t arguing, but fighting.</p>
<p>She’d never seen adults fight before, but it had made sense. She and Lucas fought enough so why wouldn’t Pa fight with Uncle Joe when Uncle Joe was his brother? It made sense to her at least.</p>
<p>Pa had taken them home, told Lucas that he couldn’t have a knife, that if Uncle Joe gave him one he wasn’t allowed to visit anymore and Zoe listened to it all without saying a single word.</p>
<p>Because Pa didn’t know that Lucas already had a knife, a little pocket knife with a blade and a bunch of other things that folded out from it.</p>
<p>He’d shown it to her and made her promise, cross-your-heart-hope-to-die, never to tell anyone.</p>
<p>Before Pa had even said anything Zoe got the feeling that it wasn’t something Lucas was supposed to have, which was why he hadn’t taken it out with Uncle Joe.</p>
<p>Lucas was the next to get a nibble on his bait, a really good tap that made the tip of his rod bend then snap back and then bend again when the fish came back.</p>
<p>He started to reel in as fast as he could.</p>
<p>“Looks like you got a good one there,” Uncle Joe said approvingly.</p>
<p>Zoe stared at the rings in the water where her line sat, wishing that she’d get a fish soon so that Uncle Joe would say that she had a good one too.</p>
<p>“I bet it’s a catfish,” Lucas said excitedly, “Or a bass. Something really big.”</p>
<p>His rod shook like Zoe’d never seen before and bent even farther.</p>
<p>“The biggest one I’ve ever caught,” Lucas laughed, “So big we can go home once I reel it in because it’ll be enough for all of us to eat.”</p>
<p>Uncle Joe laughed, but didn’t say anything, just watched as Lucas’ line zigged one way and zagged the other as the fish fought.</p>
<p>There was a whining noise that Zoe had never heard before and couldn’t make sense of until Uncle Joe exclaimed, “Careful, it’s taking line!”</p>
<p>The fish was strong enough that it was actually pulling the line back out!</p>
<p>Lucas looked helplessly at Uncle Joe, “What do I do?”</p>
<p>“Slow down, wait until it eases up and then start reeling in again,” Uncle Joe said calmly, as though him being calm would help Lucas stay calm.</p>
<p>Zoe could have told him that it didn’t work that way, when Lucas got wound up there was nothing in the world that could wind him back down.</p>
<p>Lucas followed Uncle Joe’s instructions on how to let the line give and take, gaining on that fish bit by bit.</p>
<p>Zoe saw water fly and scales flash as it went to the surface, but it dove back down before she got a good look at it.</p>
<p>Ripples moved through the water and the rod bent further, looking like it was about to snap.</p>
<p>“Shit,” Uncle Joe swore in a very flat, matter-of-fact way, and then his knife was in his hand.</p>
<p>The rod sprang back as the line was cut.</p>
<p>“Why the heck did you do that,” Lucas screamed, angry enough to actually swear in front of an adult.</p>
<p>“Look,” Uncle Joe gestured with his knife and smirked.</p>
<p>A gator, not a big one, but it was still a gator, came to the surface and tossed its head side to side, slamming a fish against the water.</p>
<p>Lucas’ fish.</p>
<p>“He stole my fish!” Lucas howled and for a second Zoe was afraid that he’d dive in the water to try and get it back, “That stupid, stupid lizard took my fish!”</p>
<p>“He did,” Uncle Joe said agreeable, as if it Lucas being red in the face and looking on the verge of tears was no big deal, “And if I didn’t cut the line he’d have snapped your rod too.”</p>
<p>Zoe gasped at that and started reeling in.</p>
<p>“That’s a good idea,” Uncle Joe said, following suit, “With a gator around the fish won’t be biting.”</p>
<p>Lucas stared at the two of them, back at the gator and picked up a stick, throwing it at the place where the gator had gone under.</p>
<p>“What are we going to do then?” He demanded, not willing to let the gator win.</p>
<p>“Head back and see what I have to make you kids lunch. I’ll never hear the end of it from your ma if I sent you home hungry.”</p>
<p>“About the gator!” Lucas stomped his foot in the mud.</p>
<p>“They usually stick around once they find a good spot,” Uncle Joe stared at the stick bobbing in the water, “Territorial sons of bitches and I haven’t seen one of them around here forever, so he’s probably here to stay.”</p>
<p>Lucas stopped, hearing an adult swear so plainly in front of him momentarily causing him to forget his anger. That didn’t last long though, just enough for Lucas to calm down, “We can’t let him win. I’ll make a trap and… It’ll have to be a big one so I’ll need… rope, no that’ll rot in the mud, wire, but thick wire like Ma hangs pictures with and…”</p>
<p>“We could trap him,” Uncle Joe agreed, “But that would be a waste.”</p>
<p>Zoe was inclined to agree with that. Ma had put the fear of gators into her and she didn’t want to come back to a spot where a gator was, even to set a trap.</p>
<p>“What are we going to do then?” Lucas demanded.</p>
<p>“If you’d let me finish I’d tell you,” Uncle Joe laughed, as though he was making some joke that only adults could get, “I’ve caught gators before.”</p>
<p>Zoe’s eyes went wide, Uncle Joe was brave, but she’d never imagined that he was brave enough to catch a gator.</p>
<p>“How?” Lucas asked the question for both of them.</p>
<p>“I’ve got a rod strong enough for it and some wire back home. I’ll put out a few traps around the house, get some rats for bait and then I’ll catch him,” Uncle Joe explained as he gathered up their fishing gear, “Next time you kids come over we’ll catch that gator.”</p>
<p>Zoe was in awe, not only was Uncle Joe not afraid of the gator, he was going to take them along when he went to get it. As much as she wanted to say no, that it was too dangerous or that she’d be too afraid Zoe couldn’t bring herself to. It was the kind of adventure that only Uncle Joe could go on and she wouldn’t turn it down for the world.</p>
<p>“What are you going to do when you catch him?” Lucas wondered, asking what Zoe realized might have been the most important question of all.</p>
<p>“Shoot him, then bring him home to cook and clean,” Uncle Joe said with great relish, “If you kids’ve never had gator before you’ll be in for a real treat.”</p>
<p>Zoe and Lucas exchanged a look. Was Uncle Joe joking? He didn’t seem to be, but adults could be that way.</p>
<p>The two of them followed him back to his house in silent wonder trying to figure out if there was a polite way to figure out if he was telling the truth.</p>
<p>Zoe couldn’t think of one, and going by the looks that Lucas kept throwing Uncle Joe’s way he couldn’t either.</p>
<p>Maybe when they got home she could sneak a look in Ma’s cookbooks. If there was a recipe for gator in one of them…</p>
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